Sunday, May 12, 2013

An anti-hail missile broke through the roof and exploded in the bathroom of a house in the southern town of Leskovac on Saturday night.

Several people were inside the house when the incident happened but nobody was injured.

“We first heard two powerful explosions. The house shook but we could not determine where the explosions were coming from. Neighbors warned us that smoke was coming out of the bathroom,” the house owner’s son Boban Marković said.

Marković said that police had mentioned that the anti-hail missile had been fired from a nearby Mt. Kukavica.

Turkey accused a group with links to Syrian intelligence of carrying out car bombings that killed 46 people in a Turkish border town, and said on Sunday it was time for the world to act against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

The two car bombs, which ripped through crowded shopping streets in Reyhanli on Saturday, increased fears that Syria's civil war is dragging in neighboring states, despite renewed diplomatic moves to end it.

Damascus denied involvement, but Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said those behind the attacks were from an "old Marxist terrorist organization" with ties to Assad's administration.

Stephen Hawking’s decision to withdraw from Israel’s President Conference deals a huge blow to Israel’s attempts to whitewash its crimes by branding itself as a technologically advanced liberal democracy. His decision highlights the growing consensus that Israel’s oppression of Palestinians is intolerable. More than that, Hawking has made an immensely significant contribution to the campaign for boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel that has in recent years won support from musicians, artists, trade unions, faith groups and people all over the world.

Such effective forms of solidarity are badly needed in the face of government inaction. A ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2004 on the illegality of Israel’s Wall and settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories failed to persuade western governments to take action against Israel’s continued violations of international law. The reality is that Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people are only made possible through the continued financial, military and diplomatic support it receives from western states.

The Ministry of Social Affairs and Health in France has informed WHO of an additional laboratory-confirmed case with infection of the novel coronavirus (NCoV).

This patient was identified as part of the epidemiological investigation initiated by the French authorities, following laboratory confirmation of the first case on 7 May 2013. The patient shared a hospital room in Valenciennes with the first laboratory-confirmed patient from 27 to 29 April 2013. The patient is currently hospitalized and isolated in an infectious disease hospital.

Among 120 persons identified as contacts of the first laboratory-confirmed case in France, laboratory tests were conducted by Pasteur Institute in Paris on five suspected cases, of which four tested negative, one (mentioned above) tested positive.

In Saudi Arabia, an investigation is ongoing into an outbreak in a health care facility, where 15 patients, including seven deaths have been confirmed.

The emergence of this new coronavirus is globally recognized as an important and major challenge for all of the countries which have been affected as well as the rest of the world. The Ministry of Health of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has recognized this and invited the World Health Organization (WHO) to help them assess the situation and to provide guidance and recommendations. WHO is pleased to be here to work together with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

At this time there are some things about this new disease we understand. However I would like to remind everyone that this is a new infection and there are also many gaps in our knowledge that will inevitably take time to fill in.

We know that the disease is caused by a virus from a group called coronaviruses. One member of the coronavirus family is the SARs virus. This new virus is NOT the SARS virus. They are distinct from each other. However, the fact that they are related has added to the world’s concern. We know this virus has infected people since 2012, but we don’t know where this virus lives. We know that when people get infected, many of them develop severe pneumonia. What we don’t know is how often people might develop mild disease. We also know that most of the persons who have been infected so far have been older men, often with other medical conditions. We are not sure why we are seeing this pattern and if it will change over time.

There are many other things that we don’t understand. For example, how are people getting infected? Is it from animals? Is it from contaminated surfaces? Is it from other people? Finally, we don’t know how widespread is this virus, both in this region and in other countries.

Because the sums were large and such attacks are relatively new, the two Middle East banks hit in a $45 million ATM heist face an uncertain path in trying to recover their losses, financial, insurance and legal experts say.

Oman-based Bank of Muscat lost $40 million and United Arab Emirates-based National Bank of Ras Al Khaimah PSC (RAKBANK) lost $5 million in the global heist, U.S. prosecutors said on Thursday.

Computer hackers broke into third-party companies that processed transactions for prepaid debit cards issued by the banks, the prosecutors said. Then, gangs in 27 countries withdrew the money from cash machines in two coordinated hits, one on December 21 last year and the other on February 19 this year.

While details of what happened are still sketchy, experts said the banks could bring claims against the processing companies in court, or they could file claims with their insurers and those of the processing companies.

A tense weekend standoff in a South Trenton, New Jersey, neighborhood ended early on Sunday when police took a man into custody after he held several children hostage for about 36 hours.
"The hostage situation has been resolved," State Police Sergeant Adam Grossman told Reuters. "The children are safe."

Grossman said the suspect was taken into custody at 3:45 a.m. EDT (0745 GMT), but declined to comment on his identity or any other details of the standoff.

A Salford man who was the last man on a law enforcement hit-list of armed robbers from Salford has been captured in Spain.

Andrew Moran, aged 31, who had been on the run since 2009, was arrested in a dramatic raid at a luxury villa in the Calpe area of Alicante on Friday afternoon.

Moran was one of seven men targeted as part of a multi-agency initiative to combat organised crime in Salford. He was also on the most wanted list for Crimestoppers’ Operation Captura campaign, and his arrest means 50 fugitives have now been caught since it was launched.

Published on 8 May 2013
(08/05/13) Aleppo: Flootage shows women who are said to be female members of a 'Sharia Police' type unit set up by Jabhat Al Nusra - the dominant insurgent group and a branch of Al Qaeda. The women, all but one of whom are comletely covered from head to toe as per the Salafist expectation carry assault rifles, handcuffs and sport Jihadist headbands. They are not likely to take part in front line fighting and could probably be more accurately characterised as Sharia police ensuring women observe Al Qaeda's expectations of them - in insurgent occipied areas of Aleppo - particurlarly with regard to dress code.

Published on 11 May 2013
(Documenting Crimes Against Humanity in Syria) (06/05/13) Armed insurgents in Homs carrty out the murder an Alawite man named Abdullah Saleh Hussein.

The victim is first subjected to a forced confession most of which seems to have been read and pre-dictated by his captors. Among other things they accuse him of being a government supporter, a 'Shabiha' (now a general term applied to Alawite males) and a rapist. Vague and unlikely accusations that he raped and killed a girl in front of her sisters or brothers depending on the insurgent you believe are levelled at him before he is killed in a public square.

Juan Ramon Fernandez Paz, naicknamed Joe Bravo, and his associate Fernando Pimentel had been shot at least 30 times and their bodies set on fire. Paz, 56, had been in Sicily since been deported from Canada after serving 10 years for drugs offences. Italian police believe he had become involved in multi-million pound drug deals and had issued a warrant for his arrest before he turned up dead.

The FBI has agreed to review the mysterious disappearance of a honeymooner from a Caribbean cruise ship eight years ago in light of new findings put forward by his family, who believe he was murdered.

George Smith, 26, vanished from the Royal Caribbean ship, Brilliance of the Seas, in the middle of the night on July 5, 2005 just outside the Turkish port of Kusadasi. He had been partying into the early hours with his 25-year-old wife Jennifer Hagel-Smith.

His wife was found passed out drunk in a corridor but George was missing - a large blood stain beneath his cabin balcony indicating where his body had fallen and suggesting he then went overboard.

Jeff Bliss says he has no regrets lecturing his teacher at Duncanville High School in Texas, after the video of his in-class tirade went viral this week. The 18-year-old sophomore said that the monologue criticizing his world history teacher, believed to be Julie Phung, was sparked by a complaint he made in class about how students didn't have enough time to prepare for standardized tests.

An elephant lies maimed and dead by a pool of its own blood, one of at least 26 of the majestic creatures slaughtered for their ivory in Central African Republic.

Four calves were among the victims of the massacre, which was carried out by 17 members of the 'transitional government forces' armed with Kalashnikov rifles in Dzanga Bai, a World Heritage site known as the 'Village of Elephants'.

After their tusks were ripped from their carcasses, locals began hacking meat from the bones.